Airlines deny services to travellers with non-biometric passports

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December 3, 2015 1:06 PM

According to head of passport, Alexander Grant Atrakwah, the handwritten passports will be faded out completely by December 2015.

International airlines have refused to According to head of passport, Alexander Grant Atrakwah, the handwritten passports will be faded out completely by December 2015.non- biometric passports from Travelers.

Two passengers who spoke to Accra-based Citi Fm recounted their ordeals of being denied access to board because they had a hand- written passport.

According to head of the Ghana Passports Office, Alexander Grant Atrakwah, the handwritten passports will be faded out completely by December 2015.

This unfortunately is conflicting with the deadline of the airlines who will not accept passports that cannot be machine-read at a much earlier date.

Mr. Atrakwah said, " The non- biometric passports are supposed to be faded out by December 2015, so this is not a problem that should persist for that long. In the meantime we will see how best to collaborate with the airlines to see how best to facilitate travel".

Most Ghanaians have complained about the difficulty in acquiring a Ghanaian biometric passport. There's the belief that one may never get a passport without the help of a middleman.

This has accounted for citizens' unwillingness to acquire the biometric passports.

In April 2015, Government ordered two new passport printing machines to clear the backlog of thousands of passport booklets stuck at the Passport Office. The Passport Office had been struggling to print passport booklets to meet the high demands due to a breakdown of the machines.

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